Lebanon’s Hezbollah said on Friday that seven of its fighters had been killed by Israeli strikes, without specifying where or when, as tensions on the border have escalated since the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas began on October 7.
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The Lebanese Islamist movement rejected the identities of the seven fighters in a statement, saying they were “martyrs on the way to Jerusalem,” a term Hezbollah used to mourn the deaths of its slain members, 68 in total since the start of the clashes at the Israeli-Lebanese border more than a month ago.
Hezbollah then issued several statements reporting attacks on Israel’s northern border, including three drone strikes, one of which targeted an Israeli army barracks.
The border area between the two countries has been the scene of daily exchanges of fire since the start of the war, sparked by bloody Hamas attacks on Israeli soil on October 7, particularly between the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Israel. The Palestinian Islamist movement is in power in Gaza.
According to an AFP count, at least 90 people were killed in cross-border clashes on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters. On the Israeli side, six soldiers and two civilians were killed.
The Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) reported on Friday that an Israeli shell landed in the courtyard of the hospital in a Lebanese border village but did not explode.
The NNA also reported Israeli fire on several border villages, particularly Mais al-Jabal, where a family was evacuated from a house, and Hula, where Israeli fire “slightly injured” a Lebanese man.
Earlier on Friday, the Israeli military said it had attacked an unnamed organization in Syria and said it was behind a drone strike that struck a school in southern Israel on Thursday.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), the Israeli strikes targeted sites belonging to Hezbollah, an ally of Damascus and arch-enemy of Israel.
On Wednesday, Israeli airstrikes killed three pro-Iranian fighters when they targeted Hezbollah sites near the Syrian capital Damascus, according to the OSDH, which is based in the United Kingdom but has an extensive network of sources in Syria.
Israel attacked Syria several times in October.